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First Black Player in the SWC?

I saw this on Hayden Fry's bio. I thought the first black player in the SWC was from Baylor??? Maybe he wasn't as big of name. Info please.

When Fry took the job at SMU, he was promised that he would be allowed to recruit black athletes. Fry and the school wanted to make certain that the player they recruited was not only a good athlete but also a good student and citizen and someone with the mental toughness to be the first black player in conference history. Fry found that player in

. LeVias was a great player, an exceptional student, and mentally tough. He had never had discipline problems and was deeply religious. LeVias was the perfect player for SMU.
Jerry LeVias had many other scholarship offers to good integrated schools, but he chose to attend SMU. In 1966, LeVias became the first black player in the

LeVias was the first black player to receive a scholarship to a SWC school - Westbrook was the first to actually play in a game. He was a walk-on at the time and received a scholarship later, I believe.

Thanks I had remembered that from the game. It is a huge part of Hayden Fry's bio. That and Iowa. I just remember him bad mouthing him when he pulled NTSU out of the conference and made them an independent.

Jerry LeVias of Southern Methodist was, indeed, the first black player signed to a Southwest Conference school.

John Hill Westbrook, of Elgin, was the first black to actually play in a game. Baylor and Syracuse opened the football season for the entire nation on national tv that year (1966). The rest of the conference opened a week later. Baylor won the game against the nationally ranked Orangemen that featured a backfield of Floyd Little and Larry Csonka. Ridley Gibson wore old Floyd Little out that day. Westbrook made a respectable showing.

Jerry LeVias was much more high-profile than Westbrook, being the first black scholarship player. I saw an excellent documentary on him on Fox Sports SW a few months ago, talking about how badly he was treated - hotels would not let him stay there when SMU traveled, things like that. The documentary* did acknowledge that Westbrook was the first black player to appear in a game for an SWC school.

A shameful time in the history of college football. Hayden Fry deserves a lot of credit for his determination to break the color barrier, not to mention the courage of people like LeVias and Westbrook.